How sports teams can sack their email archiving problem
Back in 2011, the National Rugby League (NRL) hired an IT manager tasked with consolidating the multiple computer systems in use by the league. Though he brought sweeping changes to how spreadsheets and Word documents were organized, the biggest challenge proved to be consolidating seven mail servers of varying platforms that were home to the league’s 300+ email accounts.
THE REASON
Because rugby is one of the largest and most popular sports in Australia and elsewhere, the NRL needed an email archive primarily for legal reasons. Those running the league realized they had the potential to one day be involved in high profile legal action and were dealing with an antiquated email system that had no structured archiving or backups. Not wanting to risk the chance of messages being lost or deleted (and later required as evidence in lawsuits), they finally began to investigate email archiving solutions.
MORE EVIDENCE OF THE NEED FOR ELECTRONIC RECORD-KEEPING
Recently the National Football League’s Miami Dolphins made headlines due to the alleged harassment and bullying of one of its players through electronic means such as emails and text messages. As the fallout led to investigations by both the NFL and its players union, not to mention the hiring of attorneys, one thing became evident — no company, not even an NFL franchise, had the power to monitor all communications between its employees (and could be paying a price in needing to respond to legal requests for these electronic communications).
AND FINALLY…
Over the last two and a half decades, scandals have plagued professional sports. From gambling and doping to corruption and bullying, sports leagues have had to commission reports to proactively address the growing problems; other times they have hired outside investigators or became the subject of congressional hearings.
If professional sports teams did not realize it before, they now know they are governed by local, state, or federal compliance regulations for email archiving. And none of them should wait for subpoenas, fines or the threat of prosecution to start thinking about email archiving solutions.
If you work for an organization looking to sack, crosscheck or box out a compliance problem, contact us today. We can handle email archiving and sports teams or players or officials.
